In silver halide color light-sensitive materials, a light-sensitive layer comprising three kinds of silver halide emulsion layers which have selectively been sensitized so as to have a sensitivity to blue color, green color and red color, respectively is applied in a multilayered construction onto a support. For example, in a so-called color photographic paper (hereinafter referred to as "color paper"), a red-sensitive emulsion layer, a green-sensitive emulsion layer, and a blue-sensitive emulsion layer are provided usually in that order from the side from which exposure to light is carried out, and a color mixing-preventing or ultraviolet light-absorptive interlayer or protective layer is provided between the respective light-sensitive layers.
Furthermore, in a so-called color positive film, a green-sensitive emulsion layer, a red-sensitive emulsion layer, and a blue-sensitive emulsion layer are provided usually in that order from the side that is far from the support, i.e., the side from which exposure to light is carried out. In a color negative film, the layer arrangement is divergent. That is, while it is general that a blue-sensitive emulsion layer, a green-sensitive emulsion layer, and a red-sensitive emulsion layer are provided in that order from the side from which exposure to light is carried out, in light-sensitive materials having two or more emulsion layers which are sensitive to the same color but different in sensitivity, there are those light-sensitive materials in which an emulsion layer having a different color sensitivity is disposed between said emulsion layers or a bleachable yellow filter layer, an interlayer, a protective layer, and so on are inserted therebetween.
In forming color photographic images, three photographic couplers of yellow, magenta, and cyan are incorporated in light-sensitive layers and, after exposure to light, the resulting light-sensitive material is subjected to color development processing using a so-called color developing agent. Coupling reaction between an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine and each coupler provides a colored dye. In this reaction, the couplers preferably show a coupling rate as fast as possible so as to provide a high color density within a limited developing time. Further, formed dyes are required to show bright cyan, magenta or yellow hue with less side absorption so as to provide color photographic images having good color reproducibility.
On the other hand, formed color photographic images are required to show good preservability under various conditions. In order to satisfy this requirement, it is of importance that formed dyes with different hues show slow color fading or discoloring rate and that the dyes show discoloring rate as uniform as possible all over the image density region not to make the color balance of the remaining dye image unbalanced.
With conventional light-sensitive materials, particularly color papers, cyan dye images are seriously deteriorated by long-time dark fading due to the influence of humidity and heat and, hence, they are liable to undergo change in color balance, thus being strongly desired to be improved. There has been the tendency that cyan dyes with difficult dark fading show poor hues and are liable to fade and disappear by light, thus a novel combination of couplers has been demanded.
In order to partly solve this problem, there have so far been proposed specific combinations of respective couplers. Some examples thereof are described in, fro example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 7344/77, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 200037/82, 57238/84, and 160143/84 (the term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined published application"). However, these combinations still fail to totally remove various disadvantages that only insufficient color forming properties are obtained; formed dyes have a so poor hue that the color reproduction is adversely affected; color balance of the remaining dye image is changed due to deterioration by, particularly, heat or light; and that cyan color is temporarily disappeared by light. As to the phenomenon of temporary disappearance of cyan color, an improvement of reversibly restoring the cyan color in a dark place is demanded.
Further, the techniques as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 229029/85 and 232550/85 concerned with a combination of specified cyan, magenta and yellow couplers are extremely improved in the above-described various properties as compared with those hitherto known. However, even in this case, though reproduction of primary colors such as red color and blue color is excellent, faithfulness in reproduction of intermediate colors such as fresh color and reddish purple color is insufficient for a potential reason that a spectral spectrum main absorption wavelength of magenta image is shifted to the long wavelength side. Also, when color images are preserved under severe conditions of high temperature and high humidity, they involve a drawback that gray-series colors are changed to a reddish color.